Page 77 of Empty Net
"Of course she did."
"I said sometimes."
"Coward."
"It was the safest lie."
He sits on my couch with one leg extended slightly, socked foot resting on the coffee table because I told him to put it thereand he pretended not to need to. There is a plate balanced on his thigh. He eats carefully, like a man used to consuming calories as maintenance and not pleasure, but he went back for more dumplings twice.
This is progress. Strange progress. Dumpling progress.
The TV is on with the sound low. We are not watching it. Some late game from the Western Conference. Players I know by contract status more than by face. Nolan knows them by skating habit. Every few minutes, one of us comments on a breakout or a bad change. Then we go quiet again.
The quiet is different now.
It is not empty. It is not charged in the same sharp way as the film room. It is domestic, which may be more dangerous. Domestic quiet suggests repeatability. It suggests that a life can have recurring conditions: takeout containers, bad coffee, Nolan's hip on my coffee table, my mother's texts, the same man on the same couch after a day that did not need to become a crisis to bring him here.
I have spent years being good at noticing patterns.
This one scares me.
Nolan sets his plate down. "You're thinking loudly."
"I do not think loudly."
"You reorganized the rice containers by size."
I look at the coffee table.
I did.
"That was spatial efficiency."
"Loud."
I lean back against the couch. "You are becoming alarmingly verbal."
"Don't get used to it."
"Too late."
The line returns from the empty arena. It sits between us, warmer now.
Nolan looks at the TV. His profile is all hard lines softened by lamplight. The gray at his temples catches it. His hand rests on his thigh, thumb moving once against the seam of his sweatpants. He does that when he is managing pain and does not want to say so.
I do not ask about the hip.
Growth, possibly.
On the screen, a defenseman fails to hold the blue line. The puck exits. The crowd groans through the low volume.
Nolan says, "Too cautious."
"Isaac would have gone."
"Now he would."
"Because of you."
